immigration :: Baha'i Perspectives

Archive for the tag 'immigration'

“Passport, please!”, Thoughts of a (Third) World-Citizen

nadim October 31st, 2008

Recently, I’ve made friends with a vending machine.

The story goes something like this. Over the past few years I’ve done a fair deal of travelling back and forth. And there is one airport, in particular, that I’ve had to pass through often.

The typical routine is a pre-dawn landing (because as we all know airlines love to schedule flights at the worst hours — the joke must be on us), followed by a brisk walk down to the immigration line. As I try to get the blood flowing to the legs again and shake the drowsiness from my head, my thoughts turn towards the comfort of a warm bed. Mmmmm, wouldn’t that be amazing right now? My strides lengthen, as I figure that the quicker I walk, the quicker I’ll be out of here. Then, as I round the corner, the sign comes into view and shakes me from my stupor. “Foreign Passports“. The line I have to stand in. My progress is halted. Sneaking a uneasy peak over at the immigration officer, I try to figure out what to expect — she looks part impatient, part bored, and part annoyed that she ended up doing the dreaded graveyard shift. Eventually it’s my turn and I “step up to the plate”.

“Good morning!” I say, trying my best to sound alive, hoping to demonstrate through my cheery demeanour that the officer has absolutely nothing to worry about. The reply is a somewhat disinterested yawn, as she slides my passport towards her. And then, as if by magic, the facial expression changes… not in a dramatic way but quite noticeably nonetheless. As she thumbs her way page-by-page through my passport, I catch a glimpse of what’s going on in her mind… “Wait…what’s going on here? In front of me stands a Middle-Eastern looking guy with a passport from a strange African country whose name I can’t pronounce. And he even speaks English. Something is clearly not right.”

The rest of the routine is pretty standard. She picks up the receiver and dials a number, mumbles some words to the person on the other end. “Someone is coming to speak to you,” she says. That’s my cue to turn around and wait for this individual to appear, following which we amble off to the small room, the room with the chairs, the TV… and the vending machine.

Sometimes I try to protest. “There is someone waiting for me and I’m going to be late,” I say, “Look at your computer – I come through here all the time.” It all falls on deaf ears. Well, at least I tried. I grab some Iced Tea from the vending machine (if I have enough coins that is), slump into the chair and wait for question time.

Time to Ponder

The lengthy pause before questioning gives me ample time to toss some thoughts around my head. It’s fair to say my feelings are mixed. I neither feel angry nor victimized, but at the same time something just doesn’t sit right. In a society where human safety is far from guaranteed, where just a few drops of liquid carried by a person with evil intentions can cause untold damage, it makes perfect sense to have precautionary measures in place. Certainly, most people who travel by air have that tiny (sometimes great) concern that their plane will be the next one that is “targeted”, and security measures do provide a certain peace-of-mind, for which I am grateful. There’s no debating that point.

However, it is the application of these measures, or rather the assumptions that are made in defining them, that are fast becoming outdated. How is it possible, I ask myself, that in the brief moment when someone is standing in front of the immigration officer, an accurate judgment call can be made about a person’s background/character/threat level?

How would this person know, for example, that when I was a child attending spiritual education classes, one of the first quotes I memorized was Baha’u'llah’s statement: “Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch“, a quote that instills in one’s heart a love for the diversity, yet essential oneness of all people? A quote that says that this picture of society:
is nicer than this one: .

Of course, they would never know this, so instead the judgment call is based on superficial factors, like a name, facial hair (aka the 5 o’clock shadow) and some arbitrary lines drawn on a map. I should imagine that as time goes by this is going to become much harder to enforce; as we see an increase in the number of 1/2 Togolese, 1/2 Indonesians holding Brazilian passports, or 1/4 Serbian, 1/4 Pakistani, 1/2 Bolivians holding Irish passports, this discriminatory line of thinking is due for a major reassessment.

As racial and national lines become blurred, it stops making sense to continue using them as the standard for imposing travel restrictions. I mean, we may as well use the Happy Planet Index as our standard. Picture this scene…

Officer – “Sir, you need a visa to enter this country.”
Traveller – “How can that be? My passport says Norway, we have a powerful economy.”
Officer – “We only want happy people in our country and it says here your country is 115th on the index. You need to go back to your country and apply for a visa.”
Traveller – “But generally I’m quite a happy person.”
Officer – “Sorry sir. Those are the regulations.”
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OK, so that clearly isn’t an improvement, but it does, I feel, highlight the flimsy justification of using broad generalizations to define policy. A friend of mine once suggested a compelling alternative, and it got me thinking. His idea was essentially a system that rewards individual travelers for adhering to conditions of travel, and penalizes those who do not. Be a good visitor for the duration of your visit, one bonus point; get caught speeding, minus one point. Kind of like a person’s credit rating but applied to travel. Modern technology can make it happen, so why not make use of it?

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of what is a very complex matter indeed, and in practice it might never be feasible. Either way, the point being made is that there are alternatives, and mere acknowledgment of human equality is worthless unless systems are adopted that back up the principle, in it’s entirety.

What the Baha’i Writings Say

As with other aspects of social justice, the Baha’i Writings provide us with a frame of reference on which to base specific aspects of policy. This means, of course, that due regard is given to the changing conditions of society and allows for the flexibility to adapt rules according to conditions at a particular point in time. This passage by Shoghi Effendi about discrimination, addressed to the people of America but equally relevant everywhere, is one that I find especially striking:

To discriminate against any race, on the ground of its being socially backward, politically immature, and numerically in a minority, is a flagrant violation of the spirit that animates the Faith of Bahá’u'lláh. The consciousness of any division or cleavage in its ranks is alien to its very purpose, principles, and ideals… every differentiation of class, creed, or color must automatically be obliterated, and never be allowed, under any pretext, and however great the pressure of events or of public opinion, to reassert itself. If any discrimination is at all to be tolerated, it should be a discrimination not against, but rather in favor of the minority, be it racial or otherwise. Unlike the nations and peoples of the earth, be they of the East or of the West, democratic or authoritarian, communist or capitalist, whether belonging to the Old World or the New, who either ignore, trample upon, or extirpate, the racial, religious, or political minorities within the sphere of their jurisdiction, every organized community enlisted under the banner of Bahá’u'lláh should feel it to be its first and inescapable obligation to nurture, encourage, and safeguard every minority belonging to any faith, race, class, or nation within it.

(Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 34)

These are powerful words indeed, and a lofty standard for humanity to strive towards. I’m not going to attempt to speculate what this might mean in the context of border policy, but the message that comes through loud and clear is that discrimination based on class, creed or colour ultimately has no place in a just society. Environmental factors, maybe. Overpopulation, perhaps. Skills distribution, conceivable. The 3 Cs – not any longer.

Goodbye Vending Machine

An hour and a bunch of questions later I’m free to go. The questions were all the same. The answers were all the same. One wonders where the value in all this lay. I bid a fond farewell to the quencher of my thirst (more like a see-you-next-time) and scurry off in search of my luggage.